My Copending Application Ser. No. 741,850 which was filed Nov. 15, 1976 for a Lingual Orthodontic Appliance discloses a lingual orthodontic arch wire appliance system which comprises a plurality of orthodontic brackets and tubes which are cemented directly to the lingual surfaces of the teeth of a patient, and an arch wire intercoupling the brackets and tubes extending around the lingual side of the teeth. The arch wire is supported on the bracket by means of individual annular elastic ligatures which are supported in grooves extending around the periphery of the respective brackets and tubes. The purpose of the present invention is to provide a hand tool which may be used conveniently to stretch and mount the annular elastic ligatures in the peripheral grooves of the various brackets and tubes so that they may support the arch wire.
The use of annular elastic ligatures in conjunction with orthodontic brackets and tubes is widespread and well established. However, the application of such ligatures to the brackets and tubes has represented a tedious and time consuming operation. Hand tools have been proposed in the past for applying elastic ligatures to the brackets and tubes, but such prior art hand tools have met with only limited acceptance, and none is appropriate for inserting the ligatures on orthodontic brackets and tubes which have been affixed to the lingual side of the teeth, as is the case with the appliance of the copending application.
In the case of the lingual brackets and tubes of the copending application, the operation of inserting the annular elastic ligatures is more complicated because of the inaccessible position of the brackets, and the objective of the present invention is to provide a hand tool which is particularly adapted to apply the annular elastic ligatures to the lingual brackets.
As mentioned above, the hand tool of the present invention is constructed of a particular shape to allow for easy placing of the ligatures on the brackets and tubes attached to the lingual surfaces of the patient's teeth. The appliance is constructed to be hand manipulated by the orthodontist so as to carry the ligature to the lingual surface of the tooth in position to be stretched around and into the peripheral channel in the lingual bracket in order to hold the arch wire in place.